


Teamwork

by RC_McLachlan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another website, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Three years Goku you almost had it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 13:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18717979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/pseuds/RC_McLachlan
Summary: Two hours after Goku accidentally spills the beans about the boy from the future, three things happen: Bulma goes treasure hunting, Vegeta gets maudlin, and an actual adult decision is made.





	Teamwork

**Author's Note:**

> This was partly inspired by okebtrash’s art. [You know the one.](https://twitter.com/okebtrash/status/1051691828443934721) But mostly people getting shitrocked on rooftops and working through life-altering problems is my jam. 
> 
> Unbeta’d.

Two hours after Goku ruins her entire life, Bulma goes treasure hunting.

According to legend, a bottle of 728 Lafite has been languishing under an old chemical hood in the back of the lab for years and years. She caught a glimpse of it once when she was too young to appreciate what she found and shut it back up, let it sleep away the years until she could come for it again. Bulma suspects her father meant to pop the cork the day capsule technology went public but, knowing her father, he forgot he even had it. Which is why she knows he won't realize someday that she was the one who swiped it for the sole purpose of parking her ass on the roof, getting absolutely shitrocked, and toasting to the illusion of free will.

Or, well, that _was_ the plan. When she throws open the hood, there's nothing there.

She tears apart the lab to no avail, and by the time she makes it to the roof, she's holding onto the last scraps of her sanity with hands that are shaking too hard to get a good grip on them. Good for her father, though. Maybe something jogged his memory and he took the Lafite for himself. She doesn't know what it costs him to be so zen all the time—pushing all his frustration and exhaustion down into a ball that they'll probably cut out of him as a giant tumor someday must take an awful lot out of him.

That's fine. Good for her dad. And it's not like she's totally left in the lurch: she's got a bottle of vodka in her capsule pack for emergencies like this. One can toast to the end of their youth, happiness, and the world with the cheap shit just as well as one could with the Lafite.

Determined to enjoy the last rays of light before the night comes to crush her, she opens the door to the roof. And stops dead.

Maybe it wasn't her father who took the Lafite at all. Maybe some _asshole_ who looks like a walking, talking fir tree sniffed out 350,000 zeni worth of a perfectly balanced, multi-layered red, and now must face the consequences of his actions.

"So you know this means I'm gonna have to kill you," Bulma says pleasantly. She kicks the door shut and it groans in protest the entire way to the doorframe. She ignores it. If you're going to be a barrier at a place like Capsule Corp, you either get used to the abuse or perish.

Gripping the neck of the bottle, Vegeta pointedly raises it to his lips and takes a huge swig.

"A wine like that deserves to be savored, you philistine," she snaps, in actual physical pain. It'd be great if the bottle shattered in his grip and he choked on the glass.

But someone's lucky stars must be working overtime, because the bottle stays perfectly intact as Vegeta downs another gulp. "I'm full up on your _whine_ , but your point has been duly noted. Now get out."

The air around Vegeta looks like what happens with hot top on a hot day: it shimmers with the low burn of barely-suppressed rage. Bulma doesn't possess an ounce of the power that her friends have, but she can feel the danger wafting from him in roiling waves in every single one of her atoms. Her lizard brain shrieks a warning, begging her to get to safety, and if she had any sense at all she'd listen.

But goddamn does she need a drink, so she walks over to where he's sitting with his back against the railing and hunkers down next to him.

Vegeta immediately rounds on her, his fingers limned in light where they're gripping the bottle. They cast odd refractions of light on the floor that look like little blue skulls. "I _said_ —"

Bulma pulls the Lafite from him with a snarl, then kicks back to take a swig. The sweet notes of honeysuckle aren't quite strong enough to hide the residual saliva clinging to the lip of the bottle, or mask the taste of something smokey and new. She darts out her tongue to lick it all down. "Sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone who doesn't own the joint. You want peace and quiet? You get out. This roof is mine."

"You think I won't _throw_ you over the edge?" A vein throbs visibly in his forehead when she laughs right in his stupid face.

"Actually, that would be fan _tastic_ ," Bulma admits, tapping the neck of the bottle with a fingernail, imagining the rush of the wind against her cheeks as she, just for a few moments, flew through the air like a bird. Like the rest of them. "Make sure you give me a heads up before you give me the ol' heave-ho. I don't want to miss a second of it."

He bares his teeth at her, but the growl tickling the bottom of his register subsides as he yanks the Lafite away. His fingers stop glowing.

"Why do you do that?"

Vegeta glares at the bottle like it could melt beneath the force of his gaze, but there's a note of genuinely baffled curiosity in his voice.

She blinks. "Do what?"

"You know I could destroy you. It wouldn't even require a modicum of thought on my part. If I so much as breathed wrong, I'd reduce you to atoms," he says. His eyes lift from the Lafite to the horizon where the sun is bleeding out. The orange and reds paint his cheekbones burnished copper. He looks like royalty.

"Is there a question in there somewhere?" She prompts, which makes him stiffen, whip his head to the side, and try to stab her with his eyes.

"That," he barks. "That right there. Why do you provoke me like that?"

Krillin asked her something along those lines once. _Bulma, why are you so desperate to get yourself killed by people bigger and stronger than you could ever be?_

Her first response had been to deny she did anything of the sort, but after thinking about mouthing off to General Blue, Dr. Wheelo, Slug, and Zarbon on a fucking alien planet, she realized that Krillin had no idea about the roiling envy living inside her all these years. That she's spent her life terrified she'd stop existing if she wasn't causing a distraction, because that seemed to be all she had to offer a group of people who could shoot lasers out of their hands. Her inventions are wondrous to the people on Earth, but they don't move the needle even an inch when faced with alien technology and tyrants who can turn their bodies into nightmares. The kind of intelligence she has isn't worth anything in a war fought with fists alone.

If she confessed any of this to Vegeta, he'd probably laugh her right off the roof, but she can imagine the pale mortification that would twist his face if she told him that she knows why he challenges Goku when he knows he'll never win. That she understands.

Silence is abhorrent. Always has been, always will be, but if they can hear you, you still matter.

"You make it easy," Bulma says instead. When she takes the Lafite from him, their fingers brush, and true to form Vegeta jerks his hand away, disgust chasing terror across his face. She snickers into the mouth of the bottle. "Too easy."

Killing the last of the Lafite, she tosses the bottle over her shoulder, right over the railing, and closes her eyes to wait out the seconds it takes before—

_SMASH_

She smiles, and it feels like a stab wound.

Vegeta says nothing, doesn't even make a fuss about her finishing off the bottle. He just stares helplessly at his hands where they hang over his bent knees, and Bulma takes the opportunity to look her fill.

He may be humanoid in appearance, but no one with functioning eyes would ever mistake him for being human. He's so _much_. His forehead is too big and his hair is impossible and his cheekbones are so sharp they could cut through the hull of her strongest space vehicle. Not to mention that Bulma doesn't need the help of a scouter to detect the snarling, barely-leashed creature that prowls up and down his bones, boasting of its power and strength to anyone that crosses its path. That beast has culled entire worlds with the sort of efficiency that would set her robots' servos whirling with envy.

He's not particularly handsome, not in the way Yamucha is, not in the way people on earth prize above all other things, but he's utterly stunning all the same.

Vegeta is a being made entirely of extremes, and Bulma can't imagine boxing half of that, throwing it in a blender with half of herself, and pouring out a cup of super saiyan from the future.

The boy had avenged his father's race in a matter of minutes and still had the wherewithal to break out the drinks cooler, and all that power and charm still isn't enough to beat whatever's haunting him in his own timeline.

She drags in a shuddering breath at the memory of quiet desperation wrapped up in an old Capsule Corp jacket, and reaches for the capsule pack on her hip. It takes only a puff of smoke before she has her trusty bottle of Absolut in her hands.

"Did you ever want kids?" Bulma punctuates that by holding out the bottle to him.

A long moment stretches between them, a rubber band pulled too tightly, but then it breaks when he takes the bottle from her.

"As prince, it was expected of me to carry on our line." His words are thoughtful, uncharacteristically wistful. She pictures him in a vast room, surrounded by gold and red banners, but she can't imagine him as anything but what she sees now: defeated by destiny in way no one ever expected. "I would have had heirs."

His throat bobs four times as he sucks the vodka down like it's water.

"I didn't ask if you _would_ have kids. I asked if you _wanted_ them." She snatches the bottle back before he can kill the whole thing. "Like, did you _want_ to be a father?"

The question is innocent enough, but it lands with the subtlety of a bomb. There's an initial spark of anger that makes a space between his brows until it's chased away by what she can only guess is confusion. For a moment, Vegeta looks impossibly young, like he never once in his sad life speculated about what it might be like to have a family just because he wanted one. It's the same face he makes whenever her mother invites him to watch soap operas with her, or when his father claps a hand on his meaty shoulder and calls him "son."

Her heart cramps in her chest, but she drowns the pain with a quick pull that burns all the way down, then hands him the bottle back. She’s definitely feeling it.

He takes another slug, wiping at his mouth with the side of his wrist.

"I wouldn't wish that upon any child."

"Wouldn't wish what?"

"Me."

Fuck if that isn't a loaded statement, and she wants to agree wholeheartedly with it because the thought of Vegeta as an actual dad is terrifying. But Bulma has predicated her entire life on ripping things apart to get to the truth, so she turns his words over, runs her mind over them with phantom fingers, searching for a seam, a crack, and she digs her nails in until she can pry it apart. What she finds is small and dessicated, but it's there, and it's real.

"Look, I can't say for certain, but… I don't think you'd be horrible at it."

Vegeta snorts, then bursts into laughter that sounds like gears grinding. "Keep your flattery to yourself. It will get you nowhere."

"Flattery? Please," she says with an eye roll, snagging the bottle back. "You suck. You've destroyed literal worlds _and_ you're the biggest asshole I've ever met. You're annoying and obsessive and rude, and oh my god you are so ungrateful, just so unbelievably ungrateful. Not to mention you're the worst kind of sore loser."

"... Anything else?" The promise of a painful death lingers in his voice, but he doesn't look at her when he says it.

"Yeah. You keep putting empty milk cartons back in the fridge, you monster."

The corners of his mouth are soft with rueful amusement. "Yes, I can see why I'd be the perfect role model for a child."

"I never said role model." Her head thunks back against the rail and she sighs, taking another sip. "But you're smart, smarter than you want anyone else to think. And you've never given up on anything you've wanted. Tenacity's never a bad thing. You've haven't once looked down on me for being a woman—human, sure, but never because of my gender. That's pretty rare here on Earth. You take care of the things you think are important—I've seen you wipe down the gravity simulator console when you're done for the day, and you fold your clothes. You've always been somewhat courteous to my mom. You give me new problems to solve on the regular, new challenges to overcome. You're not boring."

She inhales deeply through her nose and closes her eyes.

"I mean, you've got your bad points. Plenty of them. Like, _buckets_ of them. But I'd wager you've got just as many good points. And maybe it’s the vodka talking, but I think you have a lot to offer a kid."

There's a sudden drop in air pressure that Bulma can feel against her skin. She's afraid to look, to see what vulnerable honesty can wrought in a saiyan, but her curiosity outweighs her fear every time, so she opens her eyes.

He's turned his head away from her, his shoulders pulled up tight, and it might be a trick of the nearly-dead light but his shoulders look like they're shaking just a little.

Eyes stinging, Bulma looks away to give him a moment to collect himself. It takes longer than she expects.

When he has some semblance of a grasp on whatever's going on in his head, Vegeta straightens up and turns his head back to stare straight ahead. His cheeks are blotchy.

Unsteadily, she hands him the bottle, which he takes. Their fingers brush again. He doesn't recoil like he did before.

"And you?" He asks, hoarse.

She doesn't ask him to clarify, just hums thoughtfully.

Her own future has been pushed to the back burner in recent years but it's never been far from her mind. When she was a girl, she dreamed of white taffeta and tiered cakes with roses, and Yamucha forced into an expensive tux, but time has a way of shifting priorities and desires. As an adult, all she wants is good company, good sex, and to never be bored. Chi-Chi is apparently content with the quiet complacency of domestic life, but the very thought of being stuck at home, caring for a crying, sticky toddler, is a dead bird slung around Bulma's neck.

"Nah. I always figured I'd leave a baby under a chemical hood or something." She pauses. "Accidentally, of course."

Vegeta huffs. "Of course."

"Doesn't look like I did, though."

They fall silent. She has no idea if he's doing the same thing she is—which is picturing the boy with her eyes and hair and his nose and brows, a harbinger of death with their mingled blood coursing through his veins—but she hopes so.

Something drew her to the kid that day in the desert. She may not have known it was amnion that tethered them together and not simply admiration for him killing Frieza, but there was something undeniable.

"He was spectacular."

Vegeta says nothing for a long moment before grumbling, "For a half-breed bastard, he wasn't a total failure."

She laughs. The world swims. "Go team."

Gotta hand it to Goku for holding out as long as he did. The little idiot probably didn't even mean to bring it up, but there's no tactful way to congratulate someone on being pregnant unless all parties are in the know. Or if there is, Goku certainly didn't get the memo.

The kid—Trunks, and knowing Vegeta, _that_ was probably a fight—told Goku he would be born three years from that day in the desert, and if you subtract nine months from that, he'll be conceived tonight.

Or, he would have been, if Bulma and Vegeta had been kept in the dark about it like they were supposed to be, and let nature run its course. But now they know and the timeline has changed irrevocably forever. They may have erased their son from existence completely.

Which brings her to her next question.

"So. What do we do about this?"

Vegeta says nothing, so she presses on, determined.

"On the one hand, neither of us particularly likes the other, and we both don't want kids. On the other…" She swallows hard. "On the other is our actual son who must to be born in order to warn us about the cyborgs. If we don't do this, he'll be erased and so will our knowledge of what's coming. We won't be prepared. We'll lose."

Still nothing.

That won't do.

"On the other, _other_ hand, the sex'll probably be out of this world, so that tips things toward yes."

The bottle of Absolut glitters like stars when it explodes against the facade of Capsule Corp. Vegeta heaves to his feet, snarling, and for a split second she thinks he's actually going to do it. Just blow her away like he always threatens to do. She's been treating it like a joke, but going by the embarrassment and resentment on Vegeta's face he's not kidding.

So she tilts her head up and meets his gaze head-on. Well, she tries to. Her focus keeps going in and out.

Almost immediately, his shoulders come out of startled-angry-cat mode and drop, the fight going out of him just as quickly as it came.

"Why do you do that?" He asks again, but instead of baffled he just sounds tired.

Bulma glances across the way to the puddle of vodka gathering at the base of the wall and shrugs. "You make it too easy."

"Nothing's ever easy," he says after another loaded pause, and there, _there_. He captures her gaze and together they teeter on the edge of his decision until his chin tilts ever so slightly.

With the lethal grace of a predator, he prowls over to where she’s still sitting, bends down, and—oh shit oh shit oh _shit—!_

But the ki glowing on the fingers he places against the back of her neck doesn’t bring searing, painful death. The ki he forces into her brain stem brings searing, painful sobriety, though, which is somehow worse.

Nodding once, he steps away and starts walking toward the door. Broken glass crunches under the soles of his boots like bones. Or not bones. Like conquered stars that, for the first time in a long time, aren't responsible for the horrors coming for all of them.

The stars trembling in her belly, making room, are another story.

Sucking in a breath, she unhooks the albatross from around her neck and gets to her feet.

"Go team," she murmurs, and follows him down.


End file.
